#game mastery

or, "Running Encounters with an Information Economy"

PREAMBLE: Something that frustrated me for a long time as a player in TTRPGs was how hard it could be to guess enemy tactics. There are a lot of things that you can do with good tactics, but a lot of the time you lack the information to use those tactics. For example, setting up a prepared action to counterspell just wastes your turn if nobody tries to cast anything. This can be especially frustrating when you're up first in the initiative, and don't have much more than just a description of who/what you're fighting to go off of.

hey guys,

it’s @worldbuildingjune​! i just came across this prompt list for people looking for motivation to flesh out their world building projects.  i thought, why not tackle it for my campaign setting i use in dungeons & dragons? it’s as good a time as any for me - my players are heading into a new country in my game and i need to develop the surrounding cultures!

it started at the beginning of the month so i’ve got some prompts to catch up on, but if you’re at all interested in learning what kind of game i’m running, stay tuned!

Nerd Company, fall in!

It's time to talk about decisions.

As a GM, you control a lot of the game. How much varies from system to system and group to group, but usually a GM controls most of the world outside of the PCs. You don't control everything, though. The players make choices, and in most systems you have dice or something to add in random chance.

As a GM or designer, part of your job is to look for where those decisions and chance events pop in and figure out what the hell to do with them. Of course, you can't identify every possible decision point in the game. What you can do is look for the likely ones, and be aware when you're putting them right in there.

Now, sometimes you'll want to handle this by encouraging a course of action to keep them from just ignoring the adventure. You can often do this by setting expectations with your players on what sort of adventure it is. If they know the game is about exploration, then they're more likely to stop at the derelict space station instead of passing by. If they know they're supposed to be heroic adventurers, they're probably going to save the lost prince. If they're not picking up anything you're laying down, sit down and talk to get everyone on the same page.

Sometimes, it's okay to just give them information to let them know where to go. Up and tell them the bandits that stole their shit are holed up in Batsack Caverns, and they'll probably take a hint to head in there.

Otherwise, you need to look for other obvious choices and cover what to do if they don't take the path you figured on. Okay, maybe you assume they'll follow the mysterious robed figure. But what if they decide it's a trap? Or maybe they're supposed to take a train to get to the mad scientist's lair. Instead, they leave the station and start walking, figuring it'll be a sneakier route. Or maybe they're supposed to fight the serial killer, but instead they call the cops. They kill the cultist who was trying to recruit them instead of investigating him, and now six pages of notes are toilet paper.

You'll always have blind spots, because you're going to have a solution already in mind. But stop and ask yourself, "Is this the only decision they can make here?" Once you've got the obvious choices, start coming up with what the hell happens if they go the other way.

A lot of the time, dice rolls are baked right into the adventure. You write up that they have to get such-and-such roll to find out where the bad guy is. But what if they don't make it? Do they just never find the bad guy? This gets into single points of failure. But even when it's not a point of failure per se, you need to think about what's going to happen when the dice go the other way. Remember that failure happens. Whenever you write, "the players must make a _____ check," ask yourself what happens if they fail (or if they succeed, if they were supposed to fail). If you don't want to leave it to chance, don't ask for a roll.

Finally, whatever choices you come up with, make sure they're interesting! Cool things should happen no matter what the players decide to do or how the dice roll. The story should move along. Don't punish the players because they didn't do what you wanted, and definitely don't punish them by making the game dull. Even if they make the wrong choice, it should go wrong in exciting ways.

And when you run a game, and a decision point pops up you weren't expecting, don't just force things back on track. Work it into the story. Move things around. They don't find the vampire, but now they've found its ghoul minions. They don't talk to the last guardian of Camelot, but they find Excalibur. They don't convince the chief of police to help them, but a sympathetic cop slips them a phone number as they leave. Maybe toss in a couple of floating scenes you can toss in if the players go an unexpected way. A mugger pops up. They’re attacked by goblin ninjas. Their rival demands they engage in a singing competition with them. Something that’s fun, but also gives you a little time to come up with a new plan of attack.

A game is a road with a lot of branching paths. Map out as much as you can, and plant plot seeds along the whole route.

In a lot of systems, a Nat 1 is an automatic failure. Failure already feels bad for players, so soften the blow of this by narrating Nat 1s as accidents or happenstance. The player's attack was aimed perfectly, but the target slipped on mud at just the right moment to be off balance and not where they should have been. The player failed to spot anything because the sun peeked out from behind a cloud and shined in their eyes. Their attempt to climb was interrupted by a crumbling handhold or spontaneous cramp.

Just make sure to treat these coincidental failures with seriousness. Don't make it feel like you're making a joke at the player's expense. If they want to make a joke of it, that's fine, but let them be the one to do it. It shouldn't come off as you trying to make a clown of them/their character.

For a bonus tip, flip this on its head for enemies. Where possible try to make the enemy's Nat 1s a result of the players' actions. The enemy didn't just twist their ankle, they completely fell for the PC's juking and aimed where they thought the PC was going to be. The captain's attempt to intimidate his men into fighting harder failed because he was so intimidated himself by the PCs glaring at him that his voice faltered. The pickpocket failed because the PC glanced down at just the right time to see them in the act.

Note that this doesn't mean you let your players do whatever they want. They don't get to just have stuff or automatically succeed. What it does mean is that when a player asks to do something, if the only reason you have to deny it is that the book doesn't say they can, then the book is probably wrong.

Consider the difference between these two scenarios.

You're DMing 5e, and one of your players is a High Elf Wizard. They would like to make their Arcane Focus a longsword, because their character is proficient.

You're DMing Pathfinder, and one of your players is (again) a High Elf Wizard. They would like their Bonded Item to be a Holy Avenger, and for it to function for them despite their not being a Paladin.

You might be tempted to say no to both of these requests, but consider for a moment that, with the first one, a staff is a valid choice for an arcane focus, and can be used as a weapon. In addition, a longsword costs 15gp, while the most expensive arcane focus (an orb) costs 20gp. So is there really a reason to refuse it? If you're worried about giving the player a free hand when they would normally need to either use a two-handed staff, or else hold their focus in their off hand, then you could say that they get a special "Elven Runeblade" which requires them to touch the runes inscribed on the blade while casting, thus using both hands.

The other one is clearly unbalanced, though. It's a free magic item that's not only quite valuable, but also not for their class. That's a good reason to say no.

Think about it. Casters get unlimited use cantrips that they can attack at range with, right? And they don't have to keep track of consumed spell components to cast them over and over. So if the main advantage of martial characters over casters is supposed to be that they're less dependant on limited resources, they should also have an unlimited supply of their ranged options.

Okay, I hesitated to make this post, because I didn't want to come off as one of those Critical Role fans that tells people to be more like Matt Mercer. So, first thing's first. Forget about Matt Mercer. Forget about Critical Role. I'm just talking about the show. A show which I resisted watching for the longest time due to its association with the Critical Role fanbase, and which now lives in my head rent free.

Regardless of how things are run at the table, the way that "The Legend of Vox Machina" adapts the gameplay into a show can teach some valuable lessons about what makes for a good story. You don't have to be Matt Mercer to adapt these ideas into your own game.

Work in the characters' backstories; This is probably the biggest one. Almost every story beat in TLoVM is in some way relevant to a member of the group. They don't just fight an evil cult, they fight the evil cult that killed a party member's family. They don't just find a city being attacked by monsters, it's where one of the party members is supposed to go for an important trial, and the last place her mother was seen alive. The group of monster hunters they try to enlist the aid of isn't just any band of mercenaries, it's one that someone in the party has history with, former friends and bad blood both. The players have more of a stake in the world, because their connections to it are everywhere. They're a part of what's happening already.

Give players cool shit; This can mean literal things, like the gunslinger getting a few extra bullets in his gun and a dark aesthetic when going after targets of vengeance. Or it can mean cool moments to use their abilities, like the central feature of a location being a magical tree that the druid can commune with to give the party a critical advantage. It can even be as simple as tossing out a few "softballs" during encounters by letting things target the PC who has the best chance of taking it, rather than the one it would be most effective against. Whatever it is, try to find things that make each player feel cool.

Treat RAW as a suggestion; This kind of goes hand in hand with the previous, but takes it a little farther. There's a lot of moments in the show that, strictly speaking, probably aren't in the rules. Like the druid making a path under a racing carriage by summoning vines under it, a dragon unleashing mass destruction with a single breath attack, or even something so simple as a magic hand spell being able to conjure feet and specific gestures. Letting things happen (or at least letting things be rolled for) helps to make the story more interesting, though. Sure, don't let players jump to the moon, or roll to win, but keep in mind that it's okay to play a little fast and loose, especially when it's something that reasonably could be done, there just isn't a rule for it, or when the story is more interesting with it happening than with it not.

Fail forward; At the beginning of the show, the party starts a bar fight and gets kicked out, but then finds a notice for a well-paying quest. Later, they cause a diplomatic incident and should be arrested, but a sympathetic NPC gets them put under house arrest instead, where a subsequent attack on their home convinces the captain of the guards watching them to let them go. Even when three members of the party are completely stopped by a thing of evil locked door, that door is eventually opened by a lone soldier come to empty a chamberpot whom they can easily (if not cleanly) deal with. What all these scenarios have in common is that they're all moments when the players messing up could have completely halted the game, but instead the game was allowed to keep moving, albeit with consequences. The point of the game is to have fun, and it's not fun if things stall and grind to a halt. So if something would lead to a dead end in the plot, give the players a way forward. It doesn't need to be easy, but it needs to be there.